Are we back yet?

I went looking for some gps/cell phone mobility trend data on the internet, and I came across some open data from Google.

Unfortunately, you’ll see a notice from Google stating that:

“The Community Mobility Reports are no longer being updated as of 2022-10-15. All historical data will remain publicly available.”

But, at least you can still download global and regional data from them at this link.

You can also find some other visualizations and downloadable data over at Our World in Data as well.

Figured I’d take a quick look at what’s been going on in Canada:

At the country-level, workplaces are still about 20% below baseline levels, suggesting work from home trends are pretty sticky.

Interestingly, the residential trends are almost back to baseline, which suggests people aren’t holing up at home as much.

Retail and recreation seems roughly back to baseline, which is interesting.

Regional Data

Since the data was available, I thought I’d take a look at trends in the Vancouver and Victoria regions as well:

Overall, the story is a familiar and believable one: the pandemic isn’t exactly “over”, and people have not (yet) returned to living life as they did before it struck.